Souffles

28Jun

So for awhile, I’ve been thinking about making dessert souffles. I’ve made cheese souffles in the past, and I’ve had a few hiccups, but I managed to save them and they were very decadent and tasty. In my head, I’ve always imagined souffles to be this way, but these ones were light, tasty, and didn’t make me feel heavy afterwards. I used the souffle recipe from the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Las Vegas. Tom and I had an amazing meal there once, which you can read about on yelp if you so choose. I bought the cookbook, and this was my third recipe attempt out of it, after the cheese souffles and the salmon with braised leeks. (Both of which were amazing.)

First off, I halved the recipe. It’s a bit of a strange recipe, as you make the base, and then each time you use some of the base to make six souffles. The amount of base you use in each batch of six is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the base mix, so all in all you could end up with 18-24 souffles from one batch! That’s way too much, so I halved the base mix, kept the egg whites and planned on making two souffle batches out of the mix, one chocolate and one raspberry.

I made the chocolate souffles on Saturday night. I made the base earlier in the day. Surprisingly, souffles are quite easy to make, if you make the base right, but I think mine might have been a bit too runny. The actual whisking of the egg whites and folding into the base is quite easy. For the first night, I prepared three ramekins. I actually had way more batter than I needed for three, but I just filled them quite full and popped them in the oven. Twenty minutes later: Souffles!

Chocolate souffle with vanilla sauce

I forgot to take a picture of the first two we had, but we remembered for the third one (which we split). This one we put the rest of the shaved chocolate on top. The chocolate in the souffles wasn’t overpowering, just enough. They were surprisingly light, and the vanilla sauce was the perfect accompaniment.

So Sunday night, since I still had a lot of base and four more saved egg whites, I planned on doing raspberry souffles. Unfortunately when we went fruit picking that day, the farm was out of raspberries, so I had to do a strawberry souffle instead. This time I buttered four ramekins, as I knew I had a lot of leftover batter. I was slightly concerned I over-baked the chocolate ones so I took these out a few minutes earlier. (Which was probably a mistake, as they were a bit underdone, but still amazingly tasty!)

Strawberry souffles

So all in all I’d have to say that souffle baking was a success! They were light, fluffy, and tasty, and Tom said I should make them for company, so that’s always a good thing. I’ll try a bit harder on the base to make sure it’s a bit better consistency, but for a first dessert souffle venture, I’d have to say that it went extremely well!

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2 responses to “Souffles”

nrlymrtl

June 30, 2011 at 1:57 AM

I made a souffle once. It was a Leek-Celery souffle. Definitely a dinner souffle. And I don’t think the intended texture of a souffle is meant for a dinner. I think the smoothness of it is meant for dessert. Have you made dinner souffles?

I’ve only made cheese souffles. So I had them as a starter for the meal, and not as a main course. These were a bit more dense though, as they had equal amounts of egg yolk and egg whites. Also cheese. They’re called blue cheese souffle puddings (also from the Eiffel Tower Restaurant cookbook). The main difference is that once you bake the souffles, you let them cool for a few minutes, then invert them out onto a baking sheet. You then bake them for a bit longer to get the outside brown and crispy, and the inside warm and creamy. The only time I made them they weren’t completely done, and I inverted two of them out onto the baking sheet and the middle was completely runny and basically they just fell apart. I was distraught (mostly as I was making them for some people coming to dinner! Talk about a lot of pressure making something like that for the first time for a dinner party!), but Tom said why don’t I just scoop it back into the ramekins and bake for longer? I tried it, and it worked surprisingly well. Tom and I got two that I had to scoop back in, but they manage to form up okay. You then make a cheese sauce and pour over the top and sprinkle with walnuts. They were quite amazing, but again, we had them for starters. Even if I made a dinner souffle, I think I’d probably do it as a side dish with some sort of meat or something as the main.